I want to smash a violin on the tree
it was made from. To soak up the blood
of martyrs with my eyes, die a glorious
death and live on, weeping, sweating
blood. It’s 118 in Siberia.
I had a dream where from an impossible height
I took in all the splendor and all the pain
we’ve learned to live with.
Changing the language we use when speaking about injustice does not, in and of itself, overturn the injustice.
What is left after the groceries are put away?
Dishes on the drying rack, nothing to clean:
all is as it should be, or so they say.
On a drizzly morning walk I stopped to let a hearse go by,
its pitch-black paint sweating polish, and as I waited
for the procession I thought about who profits from tragedy,
the business of loss, and who profits no matter what,
In Xinjiang, 7,000-miles
away, a morning sun, reflecting off the
glasses of early risers, the windshields
of commuters, is so bright as to redact
last night’s graffiti: Down with Xi.
If life is a lucid dream or some near-perfect
computer simulation, do I risk waking up
to a world in which I can’t embrace you?
I want to touch what aches in us, the light
we guard to stay alive. My dear, come quick.
I hear a knock; I’m afraid. Is it you?
I dare to open and let hope come through.
I have lived as free as a fragrance on the wind,
as shackled to the earth as the vine that produced it.
May I confess in a poem what is forbidden us in prose?
The last thing he saw was the joy in her eyes.
Back home the flowers have wilted and the balloon,
twisting slowly in the now-stale air,
sinks lower and lower to the ground.